Yellow birds

Let me first begin by saying that Holter Graham is now one of my favorite Audible narrators. His performance of his book was absolutely fantastic, and you may be truly missing out on an experience if you read the print edition of this book rather than listen to the audio book.

I do not want to say too much about this book and, usually, I do not write long reviews about works of fiction because I do not want to spoil it for any other readers. So, what can you expect from this book in a nutshell? First, Kevin Powers is an Iraq War veteran who served in Tal Afar from 2004-2005 and hailed from the suburbs of Richmond, VA. The book portrays a fictional version of himself in "Private Bartle" who was also from Richmond and served in Tal Afar from 2004 to 2005. The book is narrated from the first person perspective when Bartle, for reasons I will leave undisclosed, is living alone in a cabin in civilian life. Chapters transition between civilian life (usually postwar civ. life) in Richmond and his recollections of skirmishes and missions in Tal Afar.

The crux of the story centers around the relationship between Private Bartle and Private Murphy who attended basic training together and, by order of Sergeant Sterling, become battle buddies during the conflict.

Readers will find many of the pervasive themes of Iraq 2003 literature: soldiers confronting the meaninglessness of the conflict; veterans struggling with the physiological and psychological repercussions of PTSD; the veteran's take on "Thank You For Your Service" and the emotional response the prompts in men; the nature of friendship and brotherhood in combat; and, perhaps most important, how soldiers navigate feelings of guilt and regret (and the pursuit of some form of absolution) in the postwar.

Powers imitates the form and style of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and there are many parallels between the two stories both in organization, theme, the trauma of combat, and the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian society.

I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone interested in reading war fiction (esp. in the vein of Remarque or O'Brien).

I think The Yellow Birds is going to haunt me for a while. It's not a novel I was tempted to pick up on my own but I thought I might give it a try for a book club. My family has been going through some rough things lately and I'm in more of an escapism mode these days.

It's hard to say that I'm glad I read it because it filled me with such sadness. I could only read a chapter or two at a time and then stop to think over what I read before moving onwards. Sometimes I found myself openly weeping at the brutality and senselessness that surrounded our protagonist John Bartle. Were it not for the sparse but lyrical prose and the catharsis, I might have stopped reading several times. I was just that overcome. It's been a long time since a novel made such an impact on me. So no, I'm not glad to have read the novel. I'm haunted, I'm stirred up, I'm angry and sad at the senselessness of war. I'm glad to be alive and alert and aware enough to appreciate that little black marks on the page could so touch my heart.

Haunted by Murph, The Yellow Birds follows the story of Private Bartle and his time served in Al Tafar, Iraq, the loss of a friend and the aftermath. Every war there seems to be one powerful book that is so heartbreaking but helps readers get an idea of the tragic nature of war; I'm thinking All Quiet on the Western Front, The Diary of a Young Girl, The Things They Carried and now The Yellow Birds can quiet possible be the one to reflect the harsh reality of the Iraq War.

This is a book of friendship and lose; the novel is broken into two parts which are woven together. First there is the story of the friendship and serving together in the war and the other is of Private Bartle struggling to deal with the lost of his friend and returning from the war. There is a real beauty in the way Kevin Powers has melded the two together and the way he tries to help the reader understand the psychological mindset of a soldier turning from war. There is a wonderful part in the book where a bartender refers to Bartle as a hero and his reaction was basically ‘how can I be considered a hero if all I did was survive.’

I don’t want to sound to clique with using words like beautiful, stunning, haunting and heart breaking but this words do seem very appropriate for this book. This is a debut novel for Kevin Powers and with his experience serving in the Iraq War and his poetry background, The Yellow Birds comes together for an emotional sensation. The proses of this novel are just wonderful and the characters really do seem to be well developed without showing too much.

I will admit I don’t read many war books but I’ve recently read two wonderful books on the Iraq war; this one and Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk (review up in two days). While both books were wonderfully thought provoking they were in two very different ways. If The Yellow Birds doesn’t become the stand out book for the Iraq war; like All Quiet on the Western Front, The Diary of a Young Girl or The Things They Carried I have a feeling it might be compared to the psychological mindset of war along with Catch 22 or Slaughterhouse-Five. This truly is a stunning book that made me tear up and feel for the soldiers fight in Iraq. Everyone should read this book.